How to identify misinformation in Putin’s war on Ukraine
The regime of Vladimir Putin uses lies as weapons to undermine opposition and expand Putin’s range of options, including to make room for shocking crimes against humanity. Some observers now worry that Putin has profited for so long from a nonstop campaign of disinformation that he now believes even the most absurd lies can have an immediate effect of disabling adversaries and advancing his cause.
One possible example of this delusional grandiosity is a conversation Putin had today with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in which he claimed Russia has not bombed any civilian targets and that all evidence of his forces doing this are “deep fakes”.
Another example was his Ambassador to the United Nations, now barred from the US as persona-non-grata, telling the Security Council there was no invasion planned and officials in Moscow were sleeping, even as Putin launched the invasion.
There is also evidence Russia is planning to use Ukrainian TV and government institutions, once they seize a city, to spread lies about Ukraine’s government and military, to break down the unified response from the Ukrainian people and the international community.
PBS News Hour has published a handy guide on “How to spot fake or misleading footage on social media claiming to be from the Ukraine war”, reporting:
“Amid the alarming images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past few days, millions of people have also seen misleading, manipulated or false information about the conflict on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram.“
The article outlines:
Common fakery techniques;
What’s being done about it;
What you can do—how to read meta data, look for inconsistencies, ask a few questions before sharing;
Reliable fact-checking services.
The investigative reporting organization Bell¿ngcat is tracking Russia’s information war and has reported that as “a number of questionable videos and claims have appeared on social media and in Russian state media outlets [appearing] to suggest Ukrainian aggression near the country’s border with Russia” and that such falsehoods are designed to serve as “a potential pretext for conflict”.
Less than 24 hours after that report was published, Putin did in fact launch his invasion, citing some of the false reports his regime was spreading in Russian media.
As we all look for ways to denounce Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine and call for all involved to be held to account for those crimes, each of us can help to disable one of the weapons Putin is using to advance his war effort. Take a little time, do a little digging, look for inconsistencies, and check with trusted fact-checkers.